My Name is Remus Lupin I am a Werewolf
by Vain
Summary: Repost - Sequel to A Broken Glass Kind of Magic: SBRL slash. After OotP, Remus picks up the pieces-or rather, his pieces. Complete.


**_My Name is Remus Lupin. I Am a Werewolf._**  
Vain

9.16.2003 

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**Standard Disclaimer:** I own nothing except the plot. Harry Potter and all the elements therein are the intellectual property / registered trademarks of JK Rowling, Scholastic Books, and Warner Brothers. _The Embrace_ was written by Mark Doty. I am not profiting from this.

**A hundred Thank You's** to my infallible beta, LadyDeathFaerie. I love this womanshe makes me lucid:-D

**Warnings & Notes:**

Major BOOK FIVE S.P.O.I.L.E.R.S. ahead.**Remus Lupin/Sirius Black** slash.  
This story was inspired by Mark Doty's poem _The Embrace_, which is quoted in beginning and end.  
**This** is not intended to connect to the _J. Alfred Prufrock Arc_, but it can if you really, really want it to.  
**_However_**, this story _is_ a continuation of _A Broken Glass Kinda Magic_, which can be found on my profile. Nevertheless, it IS NOT necessary that you read that to understand this.

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This story was originally launched under my secondary pen name, "Hanakai." For convenience's sake, I have decided to streamline my fics under my original pen name, Vain. **_SAME AUTHOR._****_ SAME STORY. DIFFERENT NAME._** As a fic is re-uploaded under my Vain pen name, I will delete it from my Hanakai profile. Eventually, Hanakai will be deleted entirely, so please update your faves and bookmarks to reflect this.

_Thank you_ for all your previous reviews—I saved them all—and I hope you all review again. I'm greedy.

For progress notes on the pen name transition or if you have any questions, please see **my** **Livejournal** (linked both my profiles). I hope this doesn't inconvenience anyone & thank you for your patience.

Vain / Hanakai 

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This story is dedicated with a thousand tiny little hearts to Apapazukamori, my precious Senpai,and the evil, evil, evil young woman who introduced me to Harry Potter.

Much love, poppet! 

'Kai

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"_You weren't well or really ill yet either;_

_just a little tired, your handsomeness_  
_tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought_  
_to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace._

_I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead._  
_I knew that to be true still, even in the dream._"

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_T_he thing that I remember the most is your face. I remember it as both pale and flush. Full and thin. Open and hard. The You Before and the You After. At night, I close my eyes and I imagine that I feel the heat of your palm pressed gently into the shallow slope of my hip. I imagine that I can smell the peppermint of your breath from the toothpaste and hear your ragged, shaky breathing beside me. The chill of Azkaban never left your lungs any more than it left your soul. I was so worried that you'd get pneumonia.

But I remember your face the most.

It comes to me sometimes in half forgotten visions that I mistake for dreams. I close my eyes and tilt my head back into your phantom lips and sigh once, sweetly, peacefully. I sigh into your mouth that isn't there and your name leaves me in slow exhalation. You smile against me, cheek to cheek, and glide your hands down my thin chest. Perhaps you tease me because I'm too slender—too gangly to be healthy. And then I growl deep and low in the back of my throat. I imagine that you laugh.

_Sirius._

I twist up to capture that laughing mouth again, reveling in the heat of you beside me. So long. It's been so long . . . And you sling an arm around me to draw me nearer. So close.

"Shhhhh . . ."

_Sirius_.

And I know that you're dead and that you're not here. And I know that you're dead and this isn't real. And I _know_ that you're dead. I know that.

But you're here and it's real for me now. Thank you.

Butterfly kisses shower my forehead, my cheeks, my face; down, down, down the long slope of my neck. I crave and savor such intimacy. You touch me and you're not afraid. _You_ touch me and you love me.

And I love you.

"How kind," I whisper into your lanky black locks. "How kind of you . . ." How kind of you to give me this little fantasy—this last bit of you. And the words betray the lie that I so desperately want to believe.

"How kind."

But you only laugh sweetly into my chest as your tongue flicks one of my nipples in passing. "I'm not a kind man," you respond to the slightly sunken flatness of my belly.

"Yes, you are," I tell you. Because it's important that you know that. "Kind and marvelous and beautiful and . . ." _I love you I love you I love you . . ._ ". . . so kind."

You love me.

You kiss my bellybutton, lingering there until I squirm restlessly beneath you. And I love you I love you I love you—

"It's alright." Your voice sounds hollow and thin with just a strain of honey, like a broken honeycomb left abandoned on windy day. You trail lower with slow cruelty and make soft soothing noises in your throat. But there is no promise in your eyes. No teasing anticipation—simply a deep, gentle reverence that I don't deserve. But I want it.

So I stop you with a gesture and draw you back up along the length of my body. This shouldn't be like that—not banal. Not plain. Not when you've given me this small piece of your eternity—of your broken glass magic.

Our lips meet once more in another delicately saccharine kiss. It's so simple, so _pure_, that I moan into your mouth. And you hold me tighter and hush me, promising me everything and nothing with the night's silence.

"I love you," I whisper as we part.

You gently stroke my hair, loving me, petting me, and smile as though you know the greatest secret in the world. "I know. I always knew. I love you as well."

"Then don't go." As soon as the words leave my lips I know that you must, that you have no choice. I know that you're desperately sorry.

The knowledge offers me no comfort.

"Don't go," I beg once more.

You make a noise like a soft whine and hug me tight. "I love you," you repeat, sounding desperate this time. You rock me gently back and forth in your arms. "Close your eyes."

I obey, inhaling the scent of you deeply.

"Dream of me, Remus."

I nod and feel your weight shift and then vanish.

"Sirius?"

"Remus?" The voice startles me. It isn't yours and I suddenly know you've gone.

"Remus?"

I turn away from the sound, unwilling to open my eyes and admit my loss.

Yes. You're dead.

_Sirius._

You're dead. I miss you. I love you. But you're dead. Why did you leave me behind?

"Wake up, Remus."

Oh. It's Albus.

I force my eyes open and squint slightly in the overly bright Ministry lights. "Albus?" The man looks fuzzy and vague, a blurry giant looming over me. I feel a painful crick in my neck from falling asleep in the uncomfortable, high-backed chair and push myself away from the wall. "Albus?"

He nods and sits down in the seat next to me. I suddenly see the Auror standing to his right, looking irritated and avoiding my eyes. It's close to the moon right now—they must be golden by this time of month. I can honestly say that I haven't looked in the mirror very often of late.

I look away from the unhappy man and back to the Headmaster. "Is there a problem?"

He removes a lemon drop from one of his innumerable pockets and puts it into his mouth. "The just want to ask you a few more questions before signing the property over to Harry, that's all."

The Auror makes an odd noise that sounds something like a grunt and I frown at him. Albus smiles and shifts to get my attention again.

"But they'll clear him?" My voice sound oddly empty as though your pardon is unimportant now.

The old man smiles at me sadly and leans back in the horridly functional chair. "They understand the threat that Pettigrew poses now and are willing to admit their error in charging Sirius without a trial." There's a glint of steel in his eyes and voice when he says "admit their error," and I wonder in a rather detached way what he had to do to make Fudge see the "error" of his ways.

I turn away, not really caring. "I see."

"They just need you to take some veritaserum and answer a few simple questions."

I look up to say something and I suddenly realize that Albus is not a miracle worker. Nor is he the beacon of the Light that we all claim. He's merely a tired old man with watery blue eyes and faded purple robes that cannot hide how thin, bent, and frail age has made him. How sad that a man who was once the Savior of the Wizarding World should be forced to such an ignominious fate. I blink and look away, staring down at the smooth, shiny floor. It's marble, I believe. Only the best for the Ministry of Magic.

After a long moment of silence, Albus leans forward a bit. "It your turn," he tells me. But I no longer know his voice. It trembles and stays an octave too low, for just a bit too long. He squeezes my forearm with a grip that is no longer as strong as it was sixteen years ago. It takes me a moment to realize that the gesture is supposed to be comforting.

"So soon?" I ask him, reluctant to leave the bright lights of the hall to be trapped in a small room with this small lycanthropiphobic Auror. Somehow, though, that wasn't at all what I wanted to say.

He nods slowly, and I watch the old, tired-looking veins shift beneath his papery skin. "Yes, child."

The Auror looks impatient and taps on booted foot on the floor to hasten me. I stand and shake off that failing grip on my arm and follow the man down the hall. He's careful not to touch me.

"This won't take long, Mister Lupin," he says as he holds open the door for me. "I'm sure that this time of months tires you out quickly." I'm somehow reminded of Severus and wonder if he ever knew this Auror. They both have a very exquisite way of turning the word "mister" into something insignificant and degrading.

Knowing that he was not being polite and instead simply does not want his back to me, I enter the room ahead of him. It's a small round chamber with a single stool in the center of the bare wooden floor. A ring of candles floats in the air a few feet above the stool and three men are hunched over a small table, writing furiously on a scroll.

A tall one with graying hair and a hard, tired face stood and frowns at the impatient Auror and I. I watch him in silence, reminded uncomfortably of the dark days after James and Lily died and you were taken away.

You were laughing as you were taken. I was dragged out of my house by six Aurors, force-fed veritaserum, and locked in a room just like this for two weeks. I missed James and Lily's funeral. I won't miss yours.

The gray-haired man points at the stool with a sharp gesture. "Have a seat," he orders curtly. He smells furious. What exactly, I wonder, did Albus do to him?

I sit.

There's a bit more shuffling at the table and my small lycanthropiphobe enters, closing the door behind him with a soft thud. He goes over to the table and joins the shuffling, only to emerge a few moments later holding a small vial. I watch him approach me. His hand is trembling slightly.

He stops five feet from me and shoves the vial across the distance, looking as though he would rather have sex with a Dementor than even have this much contact with me. I stare at him for a long moment, just long enough to smell the perspiration on his hands as he gets more and more nervous, and then reach out and delicately remove the vial from his grasp. Our fingers brush and he jumps as though shocked. One of the Aurors at the tables laughs while my small man wipes his hands fastidiously on his fancy black robes. I smile, but I don't think it's touching my eyes.

"Drink that," snaps the gray-haired one. "And stop acting like an idiot, Fenneltop."

My Auror—Fenneltop—flushes, and I smile again before swallowing the clear fluid in the vial. I settle back on the stool, waiting for the veritaserum to kick in. Werewolves have an advanced metabolism, so it shouldn't take very long. Besides, this stuff was watered down and had just a drop of gin in it to give it a bit of extra potency without putting its subject in a coma. It takes only a few minutes before the room seems to swim sickeningly.

Usually, I feel a strange floating sensation similar to laughing gas when I'm under veritaserum. This time I only feel light-headed.

The gray Auror comes forward and frowns at me as he examines my pupils. He pulls back after a moment and I can't restrain a sigh of relief. He smells heavily of pine needles.

"Who are you?" he asks in his rough voice.

"My name is Remus Lupin. I am a werewolf." I stop, waiting for the next question. He frowns again as though displeased with my answer, but I remain silent. That is who I am. That is what I am. That is all I am. And that is all that matters now.

"Is Sirius Black truly dead?"

"Yes."

"Is Peter Pettigrew alive and serving You-Know-Who?"

"Yes."

"Was Pettigrew the Potters' Secret Keeper?"

"Yes."

"Is Sirius Black innocent of the crimes of which he was accused?"

"Yes."

For a moment he pauses, glaring at me. I can smell the irritation rising off of him. Fenneltop shifts somewhere behind him and a quill scratches against parchment as the other two scribble down what's happening. Finally, the gray man reaches into his robes and removes something. It's a photograph.

I stare at the image for a moment, stupidly surprised. It's you. It's the image of your body after they pulled you from the Arch. After you died.

"Who is _this_?" the gray man snarls at me. "Is this a golem or a hoax or a trick? Is this some plot of Dumbledore's to conceal Black and then bring him out again once he's exonerated?"

My mouth moves, but nothing comes out.

You're splayed across the stones with a limp carelessness that only comes in death, arms open and still. The other people in the photo move, but you do not. Nor will you ever. I expected to feel something—something solid and concrete and painful at the sight of your body—but I feel nothing. Not guilt. Not grief. I am empty now. And alone.

_How kind of you_, is all I can think. _How kind of you to give me that dream. To tell me goodbye so sweetly. How kind._

"WHO IS THIS!"

I blink and look up at the gray man sadly, knowing that he understands nothing—_is_ nothing—and I wish I were elsewhere. Fenneltop looks uneasy and the quills have ceased moving. I feel a vague pity for all of them suddenly. Because they know nothing. They love nothing. And they do not remember the simplicity of your face. Of you.

My eyes flicker back to the gray man. "His name is Sirius Black. We called him Padfoot. He has black hair and blue eyes. He's too thin and sometimes his lungs give him problems. He was betrayed and cast aside. He was kind. And I loved him."

Fenneltop cries out suddenly as the gray man rears back and slaps me across the face. Fenneltop, my brave lycanthropiphobic Auror, rushes forward and grabs the man's arm before he can hit me again as I tumble off the stool and hit the floor hard. My Auror's yelling now, saying something about Albus, but I cannot hear him over the rushing sound in my ears.

"Get out," the gray man grates suddenly, brining the room back into blurry nauseous perspective again. "Get out, werewolf."

I stare at him for a moment as his face seems to swim in the darkness. The other Aurors are watching me, fingering their wands beneath their robes. They smell afraid.

I sigh quietly and stand, tasting blood on my mouth. I must have split my lip.

When I stagger out into the hall again, Albus is waiting. He cries out when he sees my face and I wonder how terrible I must look to have inspired such a reaction. I wonder how badly I must be trembling for him to throw his outer robe around my shoulders. I wonder how much of my blurred vision is tears for him to wipe my cheeks with such careful gentleness.

But none of that matters really.

You are no longer here.

You're dead.

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". . . that was the story of my dream,

_but even asleep I was shocked out of narrative  
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_by your face, the physical fact of your face:_

_inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert._

_Why so difficult, remembering the actual look_

_of you? Without a photograph, without strain?_

_So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,_

_your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth_

_and clarity of you warm brown tea we held_

_each other for the time the dream allowed._

_Bless you. You came back so I could see you_

_once more, plainly, so I could rest against you_

_without thinking this happiness lessened anything,_

_without thinking you were alive again._"

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** Fin**

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